"Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage."

― Lao Tzu

Chapter One: Heavens might can't stand the mist's stubbornness.

The sky was nearing a dark navy as the sun set spilling shades of mauve and vermillion through the clouds and sky in it's last seconds before the sky was fully the color of a dark indigo. Two silver haired youths laid together in the night watching the sky as stars shined in the abyss of darkness, both overlooking the abundance of traffic from space.

"Koemi?" Gintoki offered as he played with a strand of the girl's hair.

"I don't have a little laugh," The five year old protested it as she messed with some of the plants they had gathered in the day time, crafting what he assumed was a crown of wild flowers.

"You have this little giggle when you're surprised, it's cute~" Gintoki teased her, tickling her nose with the end of her own hair as he sang the last word, she let out said giggle as she tried to move away from her own hair, impossible unless she cut the strand but Gintoki stopped his attack twirling it around his finger again, "Shiori?"

"Boooring...and it clashes with Sakata." She blushed, her red ears in view of Gintoki who decided not to comment on the girl's decision to take on his surname, she was too adorable.

"Ruri?"

"What about me is Emerald? At least your hair is silver."

"Touche...Airi?"

"Love Jasmine or Love Pear?"

"Okay Okay…" Gintoki waved his hand at the girl before straining his neck to try and see what she was making, "Kasumi?"

"Mist...Slope of the rice paddy field in Mist? I...I like it." Nanashi, no, Kasumi said as she turned and put a larger flower crown on his head that was kept up due to his bushy hair, "Watashi wa Sakata Kasumi desu."

"Watashi wa Sakata Gintoki desu~" Gintoki smiled at her bopping her on the nose with his left index finger, "Douzo yoroshiku."

"Douzo yoroshiku!" Kasumi laughed as she clapped her hands, falling into a fit of acting her real age causing Gintoki to laugh loudly.

Gintoki grit his teeth as he fought his way through the opposite army, several things had been going wrong ever since they let that idiot Sakamoto leave for his dream of space. He ducked under a slash for his neck and let his sword change in his grip as he snapped it up cleaving the Amanto down the middle.

"What the hell is going on Shinsuke?" Gintoki snapped as he made it to the man's side, Zura heading for them as well.

"I don't know," Takasugi Shinsuke spoke with grit teeth as he sent another of the Amanto falling to the floor choking on his own blood.

"This isn't the number we were told, what our spies told us." Katsura snapped as he finally made it into their clearing.

She glared at them with the eyes of a demon, a demon howling at the heavens and it looks so familiar all he wanted to do was smack the look off of the child's face. Oboro really hated that look, it made him sick to think that the demon that he had dealt with all those years ago may have reproduced.

"Come child speak to me," Oboro coaxed the young girl, his left hand touching her jaw tenderly in a mockingly familia way, "All your sins will be forgiven in the sight of Heaven's law."

The girl didn't speak her eyes narrowing to slits as she regarded the other, she locked her jaw and jerked her head away from his grasp. His lips twisted into a frown as he regarded her, it was like going into the past again only dealing with a girl.

"You'll damn your soul for him?" He snapped at her.

"I'd died under Heaven's wrath for him," She told the other, "But Heaven will never forgive the sins that have dirtied your soul beyond redemption."

"So you can see my soul?" He laughed a bit, but her eyes weren't angry, they weren't even fearful.

"I wish I could see through the miasma that you have welcomed to shroud it from view," She told him, "I wish I could tell you with certainty that you even have a soul anymore."

"You'll tell me where that demon is," He snapped grabbing her by the front of her Yukata.

"He is the shepherd who herds me home, the father that cared for me," She tells him, "I won't tell you a damn thing."

"Oh you will." He smirked, "They all talk before long."

The sky was starting to lighten to morning as the Sun began to dawn in the east, she relaxed in the rubble that had once been their home and smiled up at the man who was to be her death. His white hair a shade lighter than her own, his black eyes haunted by his sins, and the sleepless nights shown from the bags under his eyes.

"You won't speak child?"

"I have nothing to say to a man who doesn't even believe in his own words."

"You're talking now."

"He'll be here soon." She tells him the first fact about Gintoki besides his role in her life, the protests of what he is.

"He's walking to a grave then," Oboro spoke as he moved his body closer to her and drawing out a sharp piece of metal, a long senbon needle, "You won't be here to greet him."

"Better he walk to a grave than into his own," She told him not even flinching as a needle touched her throat pricking the skin, a feeling of liquid falling down her neck to drip onto the ground, "I've walked into Death's arms once, being sent there doesn't scare me as much as you think."

"Sinner," He told her before ripping the needle through her soft flesh, her eyes staring at him with pain filled red eyes that glistened with tears.

"Kasumi!" He yelled through the rubble that had once been the abandoned village of Okinawa his eyes wild as he tried to find the house they had claimed as their own. Racing through the rubble with a one track mind of finding her when the smell of blood hit his senses. His head jerked to the side to see a small bloody body in a indented pile of rubble, his red eyes narrowing as he moved forward.

Sakata Kasumi, his little-hell his daughter, wasn't conscious at the moment with her pale skin tainted with the red liquid of life still sluggishly leaking between her fingers from where she had been holding her throat. However instead of it being life threatening it was more of a warning strike than a deathly blow. Her lips and chin stained with the same liquid that ruined her yukata. He brushed her hair back before stripping out of his pure white haori and began to tears strips out to bandage her wounds, she was worth more than a piece of clothing after all.

Gintoki shook his head as he stared at the latest battle, Kasumi posted on his back watching with chilling red eyes that were glazed with a fever. This battle would go on without him, his sword slamming into the ground as he turned his back on the front lines and made his way forward, forward into a new life...a better life he hoped.